My mum was waiting with sex gurus as I lost my virginity: Shirley Maclaine's girl reveals another side of the actress in new book

In Downton Abbey she has won over a new legion of fans as the pushy matriarch Martha Levinson, but another side of Shirley MacLaine has emerged in a new book.

Her daughter Sachi Parker says that during a bizarre episode in the 1970s, Shirley was all for her losing her virginity.

In a shocking memoir released this weekend in America, Lucky Me: My Life With – And Without – My Mom, Sachi says that the 78-year-old actress took little interest in her life until she was 17.

Revelations: Sachi, with Shirley MacLaine at the 1984 Oscars, tells all in her new book

Then, she and her boyfriend, Brad, were invited to the star’s California beachfront flat where she claims she met Shirley’s sex therapist friends, Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen.

Sachi says Phyllis told her mother: ‘It would be a fabulous opportunity for Sachi, to have her first introduction to sex with all of us here as a support group. We could talk about it afterwards and validate her feelings.’

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As Sachi flushed with embarrassment, she says her mother declared: ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea. We’re all here to help you, sweetheart.’

Now 56, Sachi says that helpless to oppose the three ‘powerful’ adults, she ‘felt like Mia Farrow surrounded by the satanists in Rosemary’s Baby’ and they watched as she and Brad left for the bedroom.

Matriarch: Shirley MacLaine plays the role of the pushy Martha Levinson in Downton Abbey

She writes: ‘Once our mission was accomplished, we had to face the next hurdle: reporting back. We hid out in the bedroom until we heard a light knock on the door, and Mom’s voice, “Is everything OK in there?’’ ’

On Friday, in a TV interview, Sachi said she was largely brought up by her father, Steve Parker, a film producer who worked in Japan, and claimed that Shirley ‘was very absent’. Sachi says she was just two when her mother first shipped her to Japan and she travelled alone. At 12, she was sent to the first of two English boarding schools.

Today, Sachi, a single mother with two teenage children, says she still hopes to understand her mother and has given her a copy of the book, with a note saying, ‘I love you’.

The actress’s longtime Hollywood agent, Jack Gilardi, said: ‘I watched the show. I did not read the book and I have no intention to read it. I know for sure that Shirley really has tried to make amends to her daughter.’

He said he had no knowledge of the alleged virginity episode adding: ‘That’s so much not Shirley MacLaine.’